Researchers who used historical meteorological data along with other sources, including a natural climate “archive”, to study the evolution of the ice sheet that is situated between Greenland and the European island archipelago Svalbard, have come to the conclusion that the Arctic ice in this area is currently at the lowest level seen in the past 800 years. The results and details of the study appear in the latest issue of Climate Dynamics.

In a press release, Aslak Grinsted, a geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate, which is situated at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark said; “We have combined information about the climate found in ice cores from an ice cap on Svalbard and from the annual growth rings of trees in Finland and this gave us a curve of the past climate. We see that the sea ice is shrinking to a level which has not been seen in more than 800 years.”

While the 13^th century was a warmer period than normal and the Arctic ice levels were also low then, according to the scientists’ study, 20^th century sea levels still remain the lowest that we have seen in the past 800 years. And the highest level of ice? That would be the “Little Ice Age” that took place from 1700 to 1800.

There has been much discussion of late as to why the Arctic ice is melting so much and so fast, with one camp claiming it is simply the earth going through a cycle and another camp who believes that the melting of the Arctic ice is due to global warming caused by humans.

The scientists involved with this study chose to remain silent on the issue and did not include any possible reasons for the low levels of ice in their study.